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Yesterday a group of 51 prominent academics who specialise in the study of intellectual property wrote to members of the US Congress to argue that there is a large body of empirical evidence demonstrating that patent reform is necessary. “Over the last five years,” they state, “academic researchers have published over two dozen empirical studies on patent litigation and its economic impacts … These studies have been conducted by researchers with diverse views and using
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Last week, this blog reported on Hon Hai (Foxconn) chairman Terry Guo’s suggestion that the company had been guilty of profligate patenting. Henceforth, he said, Hon Hai’s focus will be on filing fewer applications of higher quality.
Speaking during a Lunar New Year ceremony at Hon Hai’s Taipei headquarters, Guo also touched upon a number of other subjects, including the company’s relationship with Nokia. According to the Taipei Times, the chairman stated that Hon
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A new patent bill is due to be introduced in the US Senate this week and looks set to give those who oppose the kind of broad-based reform proposed by the Innovation Act a piece of legislation to coalesce around.
According to Politico, Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, plans to table the Support Technology and Research for Our Nation’s Growth (STRONG) Act. This will include provisions concerning heightened pleading requirements, USPTO funding and demand letters.
Notably, it
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To this observer, it’s slightly strange that there has not been more comment on the announcement made by Intellectual Ventures on 27th February that it has entered into a licensing agreement with Ford. Writing on the IV blog, president and COO Adrienne Brown stated: “The deal provides Ford and its affiliates with a license to IV's patent portfolio of approximately 40,000 current IP assets in addition to future IV assets that may be acquired during the license term.”
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One of the key differences of the American legal system compared with the UK one is the difficulty of claiming costs from the losing side in a lawsuit. Generally speaking, in the US you can’t do it; while in the UK you can - hence the term the “English rule”. There is not an absolute ban on recovering costs from the other side under US law – in patent suits, for example, they may be recoverable in ‘exceptional’ cases – but it is done far less
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Hon Hai (Foxconn) chairman and founder Terry Guo gave some insight into his company’s falling patent application rate while speaking at a Lunar New Year ceremony in Taipei yesterday. Statistics from the Taiwan IP Office (TIPO) suggest that the manufacturer is not the only IP owner in the country that is rethinking its approach to patenting.
According to the Taipei Times, Guo explained that Hon Hai’s drop in applications is the result of a deliberate and ongoing effort
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A Texas jury decision to award damages of $533 million against Apple for infringing three patents owned by NPE Smartflash Technologies has rightly attracted a lot of headlines. It might be the world’s biggest company but a decision that may see the Cupertino giant pay out more than half a billion dollars is enough to grab anyone’s attention.
However, as any observer of the US patent scene will tell you, it is going to be a long time before Apple is actually obliged to hand
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Vishal Sikka, CEO and managing director of Indian software and IT services provider Infosys, raised some eyebrows in the IP-owning community recently when he seemingly derided the patent system and hinted that the company may be planning to ‘open up’ its patent portfolio in a move echoing that made by Tesla Motors in June last year.
Sikka was quoted in an interview with the Press Trust of India (PTI) last month describing patents as “a scourge on the software
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In the week since we launched our IP benchmarking survey the response has been very encouraging. Submissions have been flying in, but we want many more. The greater the number of respondents giving us their views on the current IP landscape, the better our final picture of it will be. So if you have not yet taken the time to take part, why not do so now?
In order to get the best overview, we have created three unique surveys aimed at different sections of the IP market. One is
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IAM can reveal that Alcatel-Lucent has implemented a round of lay-offs inside its IP department. Among those departing are Craig Thompson, senior vice president of IP, and Ozer Teitelbaum, the company’s director of IP strategy. We understand that further lay-offs may follow.
Thompson joined Alcatel –Lucent from Nokia in November 2012 to lead what was described at the time as “a new business unit managing one of the world’s largest portfolios of intellectual property
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